Volleyball reloads after storybook season
Defeating Hawaii in the 2010 Western Athletic Conference tournament capped one of the best seasons in USU volleyball history.
A repeat performance may prove challenging this season, however, as the Aggies graduated four seniors who played a key role in their success last season. Christine Morrill, Shantell Durrant, Chelsea Fowles and Katie Astle will be difficult components for USU volleyball head coach Grayson DuBose to replace.
“Those guys just had so much experience and you can’t replace that,” DuBose said. “Our goal is to try to insert and manufacture and educate and teach as much as we can right now. That’s what we’re kinda doing.”
The Aggies do have couple of starters returning, as well as a couple role players who have gotten significant minutes.
Among those is all-American senior outside hitter Liz McArthur, who garnished several preseason honors.
“We feel like we’ve got the pieces in place to be very competitive for a while,” DuBose said. “We’ve got a nice recruiting class, a bunch of nice, solid freshmen. The returning kids that we have are very crucial to volleyball success, because outside hitting is a big deal and we return Josselyn (White), Liz (McArthur) and Shay (Sorensen). It’s just a matter of trying to fit some pieces around those guys.”
McArthur was put on the watch list for the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award and joins White and Sorensen on the all-WAC preseason team.
“It’s always an honor for anyone on the team to get preseason awards,” McArthur said. “It means people have noticed what we have done in the past. I think it’s cool that Josselyn, Shay and I, all, were able to be on the preseason team.”
With so many new faces there is still some work to do to get the team on the same page. After a roller coaster ride during the Southern Utah tournament — the Aggies left with a record of 1-2 — Utah State is not panicking, rather, feels like its progressing.
“Since day one it’s been new people,” McArthur said. “We have a lot of freshmen trying to learn the system, which is always tough at first. The college atmosphere is so different than high school. This last weekend was a little rough for us, but at the end we started figuring stuff out and started meshing a little better. Just getting a couple of games under us is really good.”
Those who were a part of last year’s WAC tournament championship team feel some sense of expectations for the season.
“I think they feel that way because they are athletes and they are competitive,” DuBose said. “They always want to compete at a high level and they always want to be good. The expectations that they have are the same expectations that we have every year. We want to compete for WAC championships; we want to win a lot of volleyball games.”
Although Utah State got off to a rough start, the Aggies generally get better as the season progresses and peak when it counts most – during WAC play.
“Traditionally we always have been,” DuBose said. “One of the strengths of our teams is that we get better and better all the time. I feel the same about this team. They’re work ethic is pretty good and they want to get better.”
Junior setter Kassi Hargrove is confident the Aggies will find themselves with time and experience.
“Once we play more and more together, we’ll just keep getting better and better,” Hargrove said. “Just meshing together is the hard part because we have new people.”
McArthur said she is confident as well.
“I think we just need to go play and not worry what people are expecting us to and work hard and good things will happen,” she said.
USU hosts an invitational that features Syracuse, Idaho State and future WAC opponent Texas State Sept. 1 to 3. The Aggies will face the Idaho State Bengals Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum.
– ty.d.hus@aggiemail.usu.edu